What do you aim for when you have no target in mind? Goals are essential to helping a team collaborate towards a single objective and utilize their resources effectively to hit their business “targets” in a timely manner. According to a recent Microsoft study, 77% of employees said it’s important or very important for their employer to provide a sense of purpose and meaning at work.
Without clearly identified goals, companies risk wasting resources and focus due to the lack of clear direction. This can be confusing for employees (in-person and remote) who want to know and be recognized for their contributions towards their employer’s success.
To help organizations and their employees better achieve key business goals, Microsoft developed a unique solution that harnesses the power of goal-setting frameworks (OKRs or objectives and key results) to increase alignment and brings its global customer base closer to a successful business year.
In this blog post, we will discuss how the new Microsoft Viva Goals helps to bring alignment and purpose into the employee experience mix and how you can learn more about Viva Goals.
Here you will find:
😮 What is Microsoft Viva Goals?
✨ Tap into the Power of OKRs with Microsoft Viva Goals
📘 Learn More about How Microsoft Viva (and Microsoft Goals) Can Help Your Organization
The importance of utilizing a clear goal-setting framework can be seen in its impact on a company’s bottom line. Companies that set performance goals quarterly can generate 31% more returns than those reassessing annually. Josh Bersin also adds that setting frequent goals and having monthly continuous feedback between each manager and team members is vital to achieving more returns.
What is Microsoft Viva Goals?
As an important part of Microsoft Viva, Viva Goals is a new module to help organizations digitally set and manage their business goals on the Microsoft platform. This new module supports the objectives and key results (OKR) goal-setting framework that organically produces alignment between the work done by employees and an organization’s key business objectives.
After its acquisition of Ally.io, leading objectives, and key results (OKR) company, Microsoft was well-positioned to develop Viva Goals to help bring alignment and purpose to its Viva customers.
*Screenshot showing high-level overview of organizational OKRs in Viva Goals
Using Viva Goals makes it easier for employees to stay updated on key organizational OKRs via automated reminders and connected Microsoft data. Users can share OKRs and their progress across the organization with quick links and customized dashboards. The screenshot above shows how well OKRs can be visually displayed (from a high level overview perspective) with hierarchy charts, progress bars with coloration for progress levels and percentages linked to the progress bars.
Viva Goals integrates with Microsoft Teams, Azure DevOps, and other work management and data tools that customers are already using—as well, there are more integrations to come with Microsoft Power BI, Microsoft Viva, and other Microsoft 365 applications and services.
Deployed within Viva Goals, OKRs can now play a bigger role in the employee experience and give clear visibility to all stakeholders as to the progress and impact of their own contributions. You can use Viva Goals as a standalone web application or directly from inside Teams and Microsoft third-party integrations.
Why use Microsoft Viva for Viva Goals?
Here are some key points that make Microsoft Viva helpful to many organizations around the world:
- 🔒 Security and privacy that you can trust
- 🧑🏻🤝🧑🏻 People at the center with skills, resources in the flow of work
- 💻 Organization layer for employee experiences through Microsoft Teams
- 👩💻 Platform and ecosystem with customization and extensibility
- 💡Powerful insights that are actionable
Take a look below to learn more about how OKRs work together with Microsoft Viva Goals.
Tap into The Power of OKRs with Microsoft Viva Goals
The impact of implementing objectives and key results (OKR) on an organization’s growth and innovation is no small thing! According to an Ally.io survey, 73% of people who use a goal-setting framework like OKRs feel empowered to take risks at work (compared to 53 percent who do not)—and calculated risk leads to innovation.
Below are a few benefits from using Viva Goals:
- ✨ Easily create, approve, and align on OKRs
- 🧑💼 Foster an aligned, purpose-driven work culture
- 🎯 Focus teams on impact, not output
- 🚀 Rally conversation around goals
- 🛤️ Keep track of progress at all times
- 👓 Create clarity and stay aligned at scale
With Viva Goals, work teams can be empowered to utilize OKRs at all levels of an organization and help everyone move in the same direction strategically. This can be done regardless of an employee’s job title. Whether it is a manager, C-suite leader, or individual contributor, any employee can integrate OKRs as part of their progress updates to stakeholders, one-on-one meetings with managers, or regular reviews when assessing progress on a given project.
*Screenshot showing Progress updates, Key Learnings and Progress over time (visual chart) for organizational OKRs in Viva Goals
Viva Goals helps provide alignment, clarity on employees’ work and how that work influences the organization’s most crucial objectives. With that alignment in place, work teams then can focus on making sound decisions regarding their work and creating the desired results for the organization. The screenshot above shows the high level of detail available on the Viva Goals dashboard with visible progress bars and key insights for managers to grasp the progress of their team OKRs within minutes.
Look at some of the key features of Viva Goals:
- Get enterprise scale and security with SSO capabilities, data encryption, SOC 2 type II compliance, enterprise-grade privacy, and advanced permissions
- Boost your business rhythms with OKRs using shared dashboard and advanced insights
- Integrate into critical tools and data sources, to enable automated OKR check-ins
- Create, manage, align, and customize OKR workflows with OKR templates, automated check-ins, advanced insights
- Connect work to outcomes with deep integrations to tasks and projects
- Use advanced OKR configurations with customizable weights and scoring guidance
- With clarity around team-wide and organization-wide goals, employees can deliver more purpose-driven work and be flexible in their workflow to reach those goals.
Learn More about How Microsoft Viva (and Microsoft Goals) Can Help Your Organization
Not sure why your organization should take advantage of Microsoft Viva Goals? Check out our free course on Microsoft Viva brought to you by our new ProServeIT Academy.
This course has 3 impactful classes, delivered online and is designed for C-suite executives and HR leaders. See our list of classes below:
📚 Class 01: Introduction to the Viva Suite (5 Modules)
Join this class to explore how Microsoft Viva and its 5 modules – Insights, Learning, Topics, Connections, and Goals – can help HR leaders and managers improve their employees’ experience in the era of hybrid work in which we live.
- When: Thursday, September 22nd, 2022
- Duration: 2:00PM - 2:45PM ET (45 min)
- Course Delivered: Online
🤝 Class 02: Support Your Employees' Growth with Viva Learning
Join us to discover how Microsoft Viva Learning and Insights can help your organization:
- Empower your employees to make learning a natural part of the day;
- Bring learning into the flow of work with tools and platforms they already use;
- Thrive with data-driven, privacy-protected insights, and recommendations on how to improve productivity and wellbeing.
- When: Thursday, October 20th, 2022
- Duration: 2:00PM - 2:45PM ET (45 min)
- Course Delivered: Online
⚙️ Class 03: Change Management
Join Caroline, our certified change management specialist, to learn how to successfully communicate your roll out, develop your plan, and implement it across your organization.
- When: Thursday, November 17th, 2022
- Duration: 2:00PM - 2:45PM ET (45 min)
- Course Delivered: Online
Click here to register for this course today!
Conclusion
Microsoft’s Viva Goals is one of many tools that can help you keep your employees purposeful and engaged. By setting and tracking goals, you can ensure that everyone in your organization is working towards a common goal, let them know what their goals are and how they contribute to the organization’s success as a whole.
Interested in get started with Microsoft Viva Goals? Discover how ProServeIT can help by clicking this link today.
